The Early Years

What did I do in the war? This question asked by one of my daughters brought home to me the fact that even those close to us know nothing of large parts of our lives unless they have been told about them. So here is a brief account of my early life and my scientific work, not restricted to the war period.

As is common with old people I have a poor memory of recent events but can recall distant events vividly and I think accurately. These remembered experiences are presumably those which had a lasting effect on me however trivial they might seem, and it may be that in retrospect I can judge them with more understanding than I could at the time. One thing that now stands out very clearly is that I have been extremely fortunate, in my family, my friends and especially, since they had a great influence on my future, in two remarkable schoolteachers.

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Nottingham

My first recollection is of being pushed in a pram by my Aunt Annie to see the trains at Bobbers Mill Crossing. It was the shortest convenient walk having some specific goal, as the mill was then still working and the river Lean was still just fit for paddling. This aunt later took me for longer outings for picnics at Heanor or Ripley which were reached excitingly by travelling on the top of an open-decked tram. I can remember her gathering forget-me-nots to send to her fiancée in France. I think he never returned for my aunt did not marry until late in life in spite of her attractiveness. She was the youngest of six daughters who, together with four sons, made up a fairly prosperous artisan family, typical of the period. My grandfather was a master builder of the old school, expert in every aspect of the work. All his sons were trained as carpenters and cabinetmakers because it was then the accepted view that a skilled craftsman was always sure of a good job. Their trade almost entirely disappeared with the growth of mass production and they were forced to find other occupations. One qualified as a Clerk of Works for Boots The Chemists, who were building new shops throughout the country. I remember him particularly well because he asked me to give him some coaching in maths. This might have been useful to him but I have wondered since whether it was just a means of giving me a little surreptitious financial help. He never lost his love of woodwork or his skill and after retirement turned his hand to making violins.

My mother was one of the older daughters, and had the traditional chore of acting as nurse and minder to the younger children, although she did have some training as a dressmaker. Throughout our childhood she was dreadfully hard worked and worried about feeding, clothing and caring for us so that we failed to appreciate her intelligence and kindness.

Grandfather was a deeply religious man being an active Strict Baptist. He has built a chapel for the Nottingham branch and I understand that it nearly broke his heart when he was turned out of the chapel over a small matter of doctrine. He was probably not so bigoted as many of them. In spite of this the family continued to attend and it was at the chapel that my parents met. My father was born at Long Buckby, a small Northamptonshire village where the main industry was the manufacture of boots and shoes, the major part of the work being in the workers homes. He reached the top of the local school at the age of eleven and left to follow his father's trade, which he continued in his own shop at Bentinck Road in Nottingham. In my childhood the sign on the shop window "bespoke boot and shoemaker" was still valid, although much of the work was done for a middleman who lived on the other side of town. Sometimes my father worked late into the night with mother's help to finish an order ready for me to deliver before school the next morning. This work gradually dried up altogether and the shop sign was changed to "boot and shoe repairer". He had to work long hours to make a living and if there was any important news in the paper I would sit in the shop reading it to him. I was fascinated by the speed at which he worked taking "sprigs" from his mouth to nail on the soles.

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Two remarkable schoolmasters

There was a Board School at the end of Bentinck Road where I started my schooling in the infants department, under a dreadful dragon who scared me so much that I was quite incapable of learning anything. The building was soon converted into a military hospital and one of my war memories is of convoys of ambulances arriving, not with war casualties but with those injured in an explosion at a munitions factory at Chillwell. Our school was transferred to a Boys Brigade headquarters which we shared with another local school, one using it in the mornings and the other in the afternoons. My class was one of three occupying the drill hall simultaneously. The teacher had a blackboard and the children slates and chalk and that was the full extent of the apparatus available. Yet in spite of all the difficulties out teacher, Mr. Wallis, gave interesting lessons in a wide range of subjects. Perhaps I was beginning to show a little intelligence, which he did his best to encourage by getting me to take a small maths class in an office in a corner of the hall. We had scratch games of football which he refereed on a patch of ground behind the building and we were also taken swimming once a week in a near-by swimming baths where basic instruction was provided. The baths was useful to us at home as it also provided facilities for hot baths and clothes washing.

When I was ten, in 1918, just about the end of the war, Wallis suggested to my parents that I should try for a scholarship for Stanley Road Preparatory School. He hoped that I would eventually win a scholarship to High Pavement Grammar School but knew that I had no chance unless I could get a better grounding than he could give me in our makeshift school. The examination was too stiff for me and I was only offered a place as a paying pupil. We thought that that was the end of our hopes but were pleasantly surprised to receive another letter to say that I had been awarded a free scholarship. I never learned exactly what had happened but I am fairly sure that Wallis went to see the Headmaster and persuaded him to change his mind. At the beginning of the next term I put on my little school cap according to the regulations, and timidly plunged into a new world, where I certainly floundered for a time, trying to make up lost time in subjects like French and trying to fit into a completely new background. I was stranded between two cultures, lonely at school and lonely at home since my parents were unable to help with my problems.

This is when I had another enormous stroke of luck. One form master, Mr. Crossland was a young man, just returned from the war, full of enthusiasm and eager to start his chosen vocation. He had enlisted for the army before completing his degree course and was studying at home. At the end of the year he obtained a first class honours science degree and a post as chemistry master at High Pavement School. Largely through his help I won a scholarship to the school at the same time and found myself in his "house", so I got to know him quite well. He was one of those rare characters, a brilliant teacher who never lost the love for the work, still teaching long after the normal retiring age and refusing many offers of headships. Many years later I was invited to the opening of new school buildings and as he showed me round he was besieged by parents and past students all wishing to greet him as an old friend.

But when I first met him I was a shy and timid pupil at the prep school. He was as keen on sport as on work and one of his ambitions was to have every boy in the class swimming before the end of the year. He was helped by the fact that there was a good-sized swimming pool in the basement of the grammar school which, although called High Pavement after its initial site, was now in Stanley Road on the same site as the prep school. It was probably my swimming which first drew me to his attention because I was by then fairly proficient and he enlisted my help in teaching the basic strokes. He certainly encouraged me in class, and I slowly found some confidence and made enough progress to stand a chance of getting my scholarship. It is strange how one recalls the little things but once again I was lucky. The day before the exam my sister went down with measles then subjected to strict quarantine regulations but the doctor was not sure of the diagnosis until the next day. By this lucky chance I was able to sit the exam - or did the doctor know of the circumstances? I shall never know but it undoubtedly changed my life. There was some discussion about the desirability or possibility of accepting the scholarship. It was bound to involve my parents in a heavy sacrifice and they received no encouragement from my uncles who suggested it would set me above my station, a view not at all uncommon among the working class. The question was resolved by Crossland visiting our home, stressing the advantages of a grammar school education and drawing our attention to several small financial aids from private bequests. With the help of these, what I could earn as an errand boy and from the odd bit of coaching it was decided that we could manage. Life was hard. There were no holidays and my parents only social activity was connected with the chapel. As baptised members they attended many meetings in addition to the services on Sunday, two in the morning, Sunday school in the afternoon and another service in the evening. The chapel gave them a sense of purpose and of belonging to a community and their faith helped them to accept their misfortunes. Sadly it caused our only serious family discord. My brother and I rejected this strict form of religion from an early age although we continued to attend Sunday school and some of the services. Our obvious disbelief caused our mother in particular real distress. I gradually rejected all religion, forming the view that irrational beliefs lead to intolerance and bigotry causing many of the world's problems.

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Fish out of water

It took me at least two years before I began to find my feet at the grammar school feeling like a fish out of water. The other children were nearly all from middle class homes and attended the school as a matter of course, which was lucky for me in a way since [as this meant] they were under no compulsion to work hard. My position was quite different, my aim being to qualify for a better job and a more comfortable standard of living, my aim being to qualify for a better job and a more comfortable standard of living than that enjoyed, or rather suffered, by my parents. Hard work and concentration during the lessons enabled me to make up the lost ground and come top of the form after the first year and to retain this position throughout my school career, in spite of several double jumps. These jumps enabled me to finish school and enter a university at the relatively early age of sixteen but may not have been good for my character. Always about two years younger than my classmates I was not given any positions of authority. Does this explain why I have avoided such positions, behaving as a follower than a leader?

Thinking back to my schooldays I am surprised at how much I squeezed into life and at the energy I must have possessed. In addition to schoolwork, helping at home, and working as an errand boy I had plenty of time for other things. There were not many books at home apart from religious periodicals and Sunday school prizes but there was an excellent public library from which I could obtain the works of all the well known authors and exhaust them one by one, Henty, Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, the heavier writers like Thackeray and particularly Dickens whose novels I loved. I would find Scott rather dull today but asked for a complete set of his novels for a school prize. Then there were the current popular novels including San Michele, the Galsworthy series and the works of Wells and Shaw. And the usual boys' magazines such as the Gem, the Magnet and the penny-dreadfuls like Sexton Blake, now being published as hard backs. This reading was all done for enjoyment but it must have given me a vast amount of background knowledge.

Then I recall early trips into the country on the back of my brother's bicycle. The country then started at Bobbers Mill about half a mile from our home and stretched through fields and bluebell woods through Aspley and Strelley to the Hemlock Stone. On other occasions we would have an hours football kick-about on the Forest before breakfast and fit in a swim at the local baths in the lunch hour. With all these facilities within easy walking distance, life was in some ways easier than it is today. In the evenings there was often backyard cricket. The yard was shared by a row of six houses and was long enough for a pitch, but I marvel at how long suffering the neighbours must have been. We were indeed most fortunate with our neighbours; one was a saddler who employed me as an errand boy. He repaired the harness for Shipstones brewery for example and I enjoyed delivering it to the palatial stables where a magnificent fleet of shire horses was housed. The loaded handcart took a bit of pushing up the Nottingham hills, but I did not need the help proffered by passers by as I enjoyed the physical challenge. It was a wonderful constitutional asset never to feel tired.

Swots at school are often ragged but I escaped this treatment. One the average the girls achieved better results than the boys who may have been pleased that someone could redress the balance. Gradually I made a few friends and school life became quite enjoyable. My work outside school prevented me from taking part in the games on Saturday mornings but one afternoon was devoted to training and I also joined in the informal games on the Forest in the evenings. One of the boys I became friendly with was something of a schoolboy hero; blond good looking and an exceptionally fine all round athlete. He lived near our home and chatting on our way to school we found we had things in common particularly a love of walking. Sunday evening walks round the town developed into weekend walks in Derbyshire sleeping rough or youth hostelling, then a fortnight round the Devon coast, and in later years tramps through Austria and Switzerland. The age of tourism had not arrived and we received wonderful hospitality from farmers in England and in small Guest Houses abroad. These holidays therefore cost very little but left me with unforgettable memories. The walking itself under all weather conditions was a physical pleasure and the wonder and beauty of nature was to me a revelation which has given endless pleasure and deep satisfaction throughout my life. This friendship with Reg. Atkin helped me in other ways introducing me to a more affluent section of society and smoothing some of the raw edges of my conduct. For such an extrovert he showed great instinctive understanding never discussing in my hearing plans for activities he knew I could not afford. In return he may have been influenced by my more serious attitude to school life because although he was always near the bottom of the class when I first knew him, he obtained a science degree and taught for a time in a famous Scottish school. The only other close friend I made was "Pongo" Walker, the son of a coal miner brought u as a strict atheist and the most moral and "christian" of all my acquaintances. More serious minded and better read than most of us he was also a good athlete becoming captain of the school rugby team and, like Atkin playing for the Notts. schools against the Notts. Club and Ground at cricket. They had the misfortune to meet a young fast bowler named Larwood who bowled them both out with balls they did not even see. Walker was an unusually good swimmer and played water polo for a local club while he was still at school. In the holidays we often cycled to one of the attractive villages on the Trent, such as Shardlow for a swim in the river. With such friends it is not surprising that I won my colours at rugby and cricket before I left school. I found when my own children were at school that it is largely a matter of luck whether close friendships are established, so once again I was one of the lucky ones. There were intellectual groups at school who discussed the arts, literature and philosophy but somehow I never became involved with them. This may be due to the fact that they tended to be fluent speakers whereas I seldom opened my mouth.

After the General Schools exam, now the O levels, an important decision had to be made. It was quite common for children to leave at that stage which was accepted as a good educational level and only the few intending to go to a university stayed on in the sixth form. However, with the encouragement of my housemaster and the help of the school which allowed me to telescope the two-year course into one, it was decided that I should stay on in a form of only six students - ideal conditions for learning. I covered the first year syllabus in the holidays without too much difficulty and did well enough in the Higher Schools exam to qualify for a place in a university. Decision time again! There were no government grants [or loans] at that time but the school put me in touch with several small scholarships, which I thought I could supplement by coaching. I did not feel that I could press the case for going because although my brother was now at work, my sister was still at school and my conscience told me that I ought to make a greater contribution to the household expenses. The family decision was that I should go, in our joint long-term interests. My brother who was two years older than me had not been so fortunate at school. Although he was very bright, particularly on the arts side, it was not suggested to him that he should sit for a scholarship. His teacher must have been aware of the possibility but preferred to keep his better pupils. My sister did go to High Pavement but was persuaded to leave at the age of fourteen to take up secretarial work at which she was very successful.

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University life

There was no question about which university I should attend since I could not possibly afford to live away from home. Fortunately Nottingham had an excellent college, UCN, which was linked with London University, training for its external degrees which were accepted as being as good as any in the country and being at least as difficult to gain. The most suitable course for me to follow was decided by my physics and chemistry teachers. Although I had done rather better at chemistry, they were quite sure that I should take the honours physics course. Several boys from High Pavement were already there to welcome me. One of them had become captain of the rugby team and immediately enrolled me in the club and also persuaded me to join the OTC. I had no strong feelings about military training and must confess that I enjoyed all aspects of the OTC, the rifle shooting, the training exercises, the little drilling that we did and especially the holiday camps. These were large affairs at which all the university OTC's took part. This meant that there were plenty of competitive sports and at the last camp I attended I represented UCN at cricket, soccer football and even long distance running. It is strange how sport keeps creeping in because I was not the sporty type. A far more important even was the announcement at the morning parade of the degree results. I had been awarded a first class honours, the only one for Nottingham. The Sunday parades at camp were devoted to theoretical work and Atkin and I asked permission to cut these and go for a walk instead. Permission was given on the understanding that we made sure of passing the A certificate. This was how we made our first ascent of Snowdon from a camp in Wales and a splendid cliff walk from Scarborough to Whitby from another camp. These are among the walks engraved in my memory. Others are a lone walk across the Cairn Gorms taking in all the peaks and a walk through Dovedale on a frosty moonlight night.

As the first class honours graduate I was invited to stay on at UCN to take a higher degree working with the Reader, Dr. Brose and was given a research grant and some demonstrating to help financially. Brose was an interesting character. Starting as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford studying classics he then went to Germany where he was interned during the war. Being a fine pianist he was invited to join a musical group including Einstein who interested him in modern physics, which he continued to study at Oxford on his return. While at Nottingham he translated a number of scientific books including some by Einstein whom I met when he visited Nottingham. In retrospect I realise that I wasted my opportunities at this period. Brose was at the heart of revolutionary changes in physics including the introduction of the quantum theory and I could have learned a lot from him but I ignored theoretical work and concentrated on practical work which I enjoyed and which no doubt suited Brose very well. For eight years I had worked flat out and felt I deserved a rest from intense study. I was unable to return to serious theoretical work when it would have helped my later researches.

UCN had been housed in an old building in the centre of the town but a splendid new building was being constructed at Highfields near Beeston during my finals year. The benefactor was Sir Jesse Boot. The growth of Boots the Chemists was one of Nottingham's great success stories. Its rapidity can be judged from the fact that one of my uncles remembered being served by Boot himself in his small chemists shops. The new building was situated in spacious grounds which subsequently became the campus of a large University. As a research student I started before the beginning of term and by the time of the official opening the laboratory was already being filled with the vacuum structure required for Brose's studies on the diffusion of molecules in gases. Not only was I the first student there but I can claim to have left my mark. A bulky accumulator slipped out of my hands and the acid spilled out on to the oak block floor. The mark was still there when I visited the University many years later. The building then housed the whole university of about 400 students judged to be the ideal number. The University, particularly the Engineering department, attracted many wealthy foreign students who often asked for private coaching, providing the staff extra income. A little of this coaching filtered down to the research students but we relied mainly on the less wealthy English students requiring extra help. I did my share although I did not enjoy it and was not good at it. One of my students, Gladys became a lifelong friend. She invited me to her home to meet her parents and with some misgiving I invited her back. Not that I was ashamed of my family but I was not sure how she would react to the loo standing in the yard with a row of others. She passed the test well. Her father was the headmaster of a school in a mining village where he had in fact taught DH Lawrence. I can imagine him being a first rate teacher although his habit of displaying his knowledge at length could be very trying. Gladys was an only child but far from being spoilt she was rather a tomboy sharing her father's sporting activities. On one occasion when I visited them there was a hard frost and they fitted me up with a pair of skates for my first skating lesson on Moorgreen Reservoir. It gave me a taste for outdoor skating and although I later skated at Richmond ice rink it was a poor second best. When I was living at Teddington Gladys became a medical student in London and we met occasionally for walks in the lovely Surrey countryside. There was no commitment on either side, and we settled for a platonic friendship. On one of her visits she brought her friend Joan and introduced me to my future wife, by far my greatest piece of good fortune. We soon found that we agreed on all important matters and were well suited to be life-long partners.

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Plum research

The move to Teddington, like so many of the important steps in my life was fortuitous. Before the end of my first year as a research student, Crossland told me that the National Physical Laboratory was advertising for scientific staff and that it was generally regarded as a plum research post well worth applying for. This was in 1928, a time of great industrial depression and unemployment. Friends at UCN told me how they had sent off their hundredth application for teaching posts. It was obviously more important to get a job than to complete my PhD course. The school and college staff gave me very generous testimonials which secured me an interview. This was friendlier than I had anticipated and I was offered a post as Junior Scientific Assistant at £175 a year. I learned later that the Director had been tipped off that recruitment was to be stopped, and therefore decided to get a few more people while he could. Three of us were appointed and there were no more for several years. The NPL was split into a number of Divisions each with a superintendent in charge. None of them seemed to be very keen on increasing their staff and the Director simply told one of them to find me something to do. Thus, quite by chance, I became involved in a most exciting and rapidly developing branch of physics.

The NPL is situated in a corner of Bushy Park and started in Bushy House, once occupied by the Duke of Clarence. The laboratory in which I worked for many years was the old dining room looking out on to the garden and then to the park itself, where herds of deer could be seen grazing. What a marvellous place in which to work! It was still then run under the auspices of a committee of the Royal Society in an atmosphere that was similar to that of a university with few regulations and easy liaison between the various departments. It was not until I was near retirement that the NPL came more strictly under the control of a government department with an unnecessary and wasteful increase in administration.

This was my first experience of living away from home and also of living in a house having modern facilities. Good digs were easily available and I am grateful for the kindness and tolerance shown by my landladies and their families. My second lot of digs were particularly pleasant. The widow of a former town clerk used her large house as a guest house mainly for foreign students, mostly girls, spending the summer months in England to perfect their knowledge of the language, but also having a few more permanent lodgers like myself. The fact that there were three eligible sons helped to make the place popular because many of the girls would have been only too pleased to settle in England to escape the political unrest already threatening the continent. The family had a skiff housed at Constables' boat house in Hampton on Thames and it was a regular habit for one or two of the boys and myself to scull up to Sunbury on Sunday mornings to have a drink and a game of darts at the Phoenix. I became quite friendly with one of the language students, the daughter of a Czechoslovakian surgeon, and we continued to exchange the occasional letter and Christmas card after her return home. Some years later my wife and I received an urgent appeal for help. As a Jewess with a husband who worked as a printer in the underground press she realised that they ought to get out of Czechoslovakia before the Nazi's arrived. We contacted one of the refugee organisations in London and undertook to be responsible for our friends employing them as our domestic servants, one of the few permitted occupations, though it was rather a joke in our small semi-detached house. Eventually, after Joan had made numerous visits to the various authorities a permit was obtained. They did not enjoy being dependent and soon found a home where they really did need domestic help. They continued their studies, worked hard to improve their qualifications and after spending some time with a Czechoslovak Newspaper printed in this country convinced the Foreign Office of their value retraining prisoners of war. They remained our lifelong friends.

I am not sure now why I left such a pleasant household but I was fortunate again in my next digs finding two congenial companions, one a Cypriot employed for the League of Nations and the other a civil engineer who shared my interest in the river. We bought an old skiff fitted it with a camping cover and spent many pleasant weekends in it finally sculling up the river as far as we could go before sticking in the mud somewhere between Lechlade and Cricklade. On the return journey the skiff was caught between a launch and the steps in one of the locks and that was the end of its useful life.

Joan had now finished at Bedford College gaining a first class degree in Chemistry and also qualifying as a teacher. Unfortunately married women teachers were not allowed in Middlesex, setting us a problem to which there was no satisfactory answer. We decided to marry and Joan accepted a post in Leicester travelling down to our flat in Hampton Hill at the weekends. This arrangement was too inconvenient to last long and after a year Joan sacrificed her job to become a housewife, but though she made herself into the perfect housewife and was a wonderful companion, there is no doubt that given the opportunity she would have become a first rate research chemist. The sacrifice was greater than she would admit until years later. We moved into a house in Hampton and I was in the fortunate position of working in one corner of Bushy Park and living in another. While my neighbours caught the early trains to London I walked or cycled to work through the Park and although cycling was not strictly permitted it seemed to be understood that no action would be taken if I dismounted on the rare occasions when I met the keeper. The house was also only a few minutes walk from the river which we made full use of for swimming and sculling. We both so appreciated this environment that in spite of the low pay at the NPL and the slow pace of advancement we were never seriously tempted to move. Possibly I was a stick in the mud but apart from the reluctance to leave such an environment a move would have meant an increase in administrative duties which I strongly suspected I would not enjoy or accomplish to my satisfaction. Although I stayed at the NPL for forty-four years I did not allow myself to get too settled in one line of work and managed to change about every five years.

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